Site registration is an opportunity to capture specific and useful information about visitors that will lead to a better product and more revenue.

The newspaper industry in particular went through a period of great excitement over the notion of site registration. That wave has largely faded after disappointment took over.

The industry may have given up too much too soon.

Quite a few sites made the decision to require people to register for content (but not classifieds). Many of them allowed readers to see the index pages of their sites but then made visitors register with personal information to read the stories.

After many complaints from visitors and a drop or at least a plateau in audience (which also cut ad inventory), the industry mostly gave up on the idea. It now has moved on to other trends such as video.

But an important variation has strong potential — targeted registration. People are willing to register if they have a reason to give up their personal information. On a newspaper Web site, those reasons include:

- Submitting a classified ad
- Subscribing to the newspaper
- Taking part in a contest
- Signing up for an email newsletter
- Posting a comment
- Submitting a letter to the editor
- Submitting an event

And so on. A simple but integrated system that requires the same information at each entry point and puts that information into the same database will create a massive and useful list within months if not a year or two.

That database will provide market research statistics about local usage that can go into media kits for advertisers. It also can be used (carefully) for advertiser email blasts and will lay the groundwork for more sophisticated content, marketing and advertising efforts in the coming months.

An integrated approach to targeted registration takes little effort and yields worthwhile benefits for sites that implement it.